@6 ZeV Proton Something for consideration - for as big a vote as something like time is, it may be better to look at it from a % vote margin rather than a pure number margin based on the way voter numbers can vary in a game.
If you still want to vote on the current update, there's nothing stopping you! I put the tallier on a timer partly to provide an estimate on the earliest an update can start and partly to remind myself to do so, and there's generally some manual wrangling needed to squeeze the vote log into my spreadsheets anyway.
[X] Move to a higher orbit: 50.0%
[X] Stabilize Moon Orbits: 16.7%
[X] Try to get into a orbit to crash into the rocky planetesimal close to our size, to absorb his mass into us and our moons.: 11.1%
[X] Look around in more detail (Anything interesting or abnormal): 5.6%
[X] Keep Blinky on the intended course.: 5.6%
[X] Collapse... -[X] self: 5.6%
[X] Collect more gas: 5.6%
Slowing down weathering makes the relief of your terrain a bit sharper and allows quite a lot of your ambient carbon dioxide to form carbonates. This greatly reduces your surface temperature and the risk of boiling off your liquid water. Having prepared adequately, you release a curtain of incredibly hot melt from confinement near your core, and it soon bubbles its way to the surface where it causes widespread volcanism in the middle of your two largest plates. One of your continents begins tearing apart from the violent eruptions, and greenhouse gases are evolved from the lava! Volcanic ash is also released into your atmosphere, and the net result is a significant drop in temperature.
Support for moon mergers appears to have waned, and after a near miss in which Blinky almost ended up getting slingshotted into a very unstable orbit, the intrepid new moonlet entered the crescendo of its orbital career by beginning a migration into a higher orbit aided by the dust-full moon that nearly flung it into your surface. The waxy ring situated between Pinky and Blinky's orbit does suffer somewhat as a result, but "Give us a little more time," they seem to say in their weird, almost resonant dance, "and you'll see the old ring had only a quarter of the splendor of the new one!"
You allow more gas to establish itself in your system, and between your size and ongoing cooling, it seems helium is very easy to incorporate into your atmosphere now. Hydrogen will remain difficult to capture for some time, and once you get to your next resource-rich orbit, you may need to obtain more dense material, cool down a bit, fix it into a less volatile form through chemistry, or some combination of these options.
Searching for something unusual or abnormal once again, you notice a lesser clump of material at the rocky planetesimal's trailing Lagrange point. Masswise it's probably dwarfed by the planetesimal itself and maybe you by extension, but there could be something interesting there.
You make a good amount of progress on migrating to the next highest orbit, taking care to aim for the rocky planetesimal there along the way. Starting the arrangements for a rendezvous early in this way reduces the effort needed to instigate a collision. Moving away from your star has brought your temperature down further. You are now in a relatively low-density band half of the way there.
Time passes, but no more so than usual.
Average air temperature Freezing 🞀–o–––––🞂 Boiling
Average sea temperature Freezing 🞀––––o––🞂 Boiling
Time controls:
[ ] Maintain current tempo
[ ] Let time pass (requires 80% support)
Orbital controls:
[ ] Move to a higher orbit...
-[ ] ...normally
-[ ] ...and set up a collision with the planetesimal (requires 50%)
-[ ] ...and aim for the planetesimal's L5 clump (requires 50%)
[ ] Move to a lower orbit
[ ] Collect more gas
[ ] Collect more ice
[ ] Collect more dust
[ ] Collapse...
-[ ] self
-[ ] moon
-[ ] rings
[ ] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s))
Geological controls:
[ ] Export core heat (use with strong consensus will boil off oceans and instigate another round of crustal remodeling)
[ ] Retain core heat (further use will induce a geological coma)
[ ] Increase weathering (releases CO2, decreases roughness)
[ ] Decrease weathering (absorbs CO2, increases roughness)
(You are free to place a vote for each category of control)
[X] Orbital: Maneuver Rings and Moons to ensure we don't lose them to any collision
[X] Geological: We're probably about to crash into another planet again so we're about to have all our geological work thrown out of wack and have to start over anyway...
[X] Geological: We're probably about to crash into another planet again so we're about to have all our geological work thrown out of wack and have to start over anyway...
[X] Orbital: Maneuver Rings and Moons to ensure we don't lose them to any collision: 25.0%
[X] Move to a higher orbit... -[X] ...and set up a collision with the planetesimal (requires 50%): 18.8%
[X] Collect more ice: 12.5%
[X] Rotate the rings and your satellites too be out of the way of your collision: 12.5%
[X] Move to a higher orbit... -[X] ...and aim for the planetesimal's L5 clump (requires 50%): 12.5%
[X] Prettify Moon Orbits: 6.3%
[X] Collapse... -[X] self: 6.3%
[X] Look around in more detail (Something beyond physical world): 6.3%
[X] Increase weathering (releases CO2, decreases roughness): 85.7%
[X] Geological: We're probably about to crash into another planet again so we're about to have all our geological work thrown out of wack and have to start over anyway...: 14.3%
With your migration rapidly bringing surface temperatures down, you tap into the heat stored in your oceans to drive furious winds and unceasing storms to help release greenhouse gases from your rocky reservoir. At least until you ascend further, it manages to go some way to bringing your temperature back up, and surely you won't ever run out of sea heat? There is some awareness that all these preparations may be rendered moot by the outsized impact a collision with a larger planetesimal would have.
Following in the wake of the recent plate-cleaving eruptions, a particularly large plume of hot magma has reached the crust under your great ocean and erupted fiercely enough to breach the surface. It may continue to erupt for some time, spewing transient ash and long-lasting greenhouse gases. Between the increased sky cover and gas released, this hot spot has contributed no net warming or cooling at this time.
You collect some more ice, focusing on chunks with carbon dioxide, and again, most of it ends up getting captured. You also try to nudge your rings and moons to avoid losing them to collisions (while prettifying them somewhat), and assuming your course doesn't change drastically, their inclinations should put the planes of their orbits mostly out of the way of a collision with the big rocky planetesimal. The other option of arranging a syzygy pointing away from the line of impact could also work, but it would be very sensitive to changes in impact time and would only affect your moons. You'll still most likely need to adjust your moons after impact if you continue on your current trajectory.
On the bright side, Blinky's orbit seems to have stabilized enough that an impact with Inky or outright deorbiting aren't its biggest concerns any more.
You try to look beyond the physical world, and your habit of crashing into planetesimals at Leisurely Speeds suddenly makes some sense. Aside from that, you also notice blatantly unphysical things like being able to control heat flow through your mantle or the coupling between air and sea, migrating with no obvious propulsion mechanism on unspecified but apparently short timescales (speaking of which, time seems to be flowing very erratically!), being able to specify which nebula materials to collect and how much to collapse and where, and democracy being some kind of fundamental law of the universe. It mostly doesn't feel like magic, though...
Time passes, but no more so than usual. You are roughly two-thirds of the way to an encounter with the large planetesimal, and increasing distance from your weak star undoes much of your aeroforming work.
Average air temperature Freezing 🞀––o––––🞂 Boiling
Average sea temperature Freezing 🞀–––o–––🞂 Boiling
Time controls:
[ ] Maintain current tempo
[ ] Let time pass (requires 80% support)
Orbital controls:
[ ] Move to a higher orbit...
-[ ] ...normally
-[ ] ...and set up a collision with the planetesimal (requires 50%)
-[ ] ...and aim for the planetesimal's L5 clump (requires 50%)
[ ] Move to a lower orbit
[ ] Collect more gas
[ ] Collect more ice
[ ] Collect more dust
[ ] Collapse...
-[ ] self
-[ ] moon
-[ ] rings
[ ] Look around in more detail (Specify target(s))
Geological controls:
[ ] Export core heat (use with strong consensus will boil off oceans and instigate another round of crustal remodeling)
[ ] Retain core heat (further use will induce a geological coma)
[ ] Increase weathering (releases CO2, decreases roughness)
[ ] Decrease weathering (absorbs CO2, increases roughness)
(You are free to place a vote for each category of control)
[X] Move to a higher orbit...
-[X] ...and set up a collision with the planetesimal (requires 50%)
Keep going for the collision with our moons now mostly safe.
Just going for a L5 point would likely result in us having to fight to keep our rings/moons and not lose them to the growing planetesimal.
[X] Export core heat (use with strong consensus will boil off oceans and instigate another round of crustal remodeling)
Keep the heat going even if it likely will not be needed with the collision
[X] Move to a higher orbit...
-[X] ...and gobble up anything the planetesimal might try to use to grow itself.
[X] Geological: Push plates to increase our above-water land mass and make our seas go deeper
-[X] And maybe give us some really nifty and majestic mountain ranges and highlands, too.
So while I'm fine gobbling up the rival planetoid's resource deposits and such to keep it from getting any bigger than it is, I can't say I'm on board with another major full-on collision at this point.
